G-20 falters with limp IMF offer for Europe

U.S President Barack Obama arrives for Friday's first working session at the G20 summit in Cannes, Friday, Nov. 4, 2011. European leaders had meant to use the summit of the Group of 20 leading economies in Cannes, France to get foreign powers like China to help with the debt crisis that has rocked

/ AP

U.S President Barack Obama arrives for Friday's first working session at the G20 summit in Cannes, Friday, Nov. 4, 2011. European leaders had meant to use the summit of the Group of 20 leading economies in Cannes, France to get foreign powers like China to help with the debt crisis that has rocked the eurozone for the past two years and threatens to push the world economy into a second recession. (AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere)

U.S President Barack Obama arrives for Friday's first working session at the G20 summit in Cannes, Friday, Nov. 4, 2011. European leaders had meant to use the summit of the Group of 20 leading economies in Cannes, France to get foreign powers like China to help with the debt crisis that has rocked the eurozone for the past two years and threatens to push the world economy into a second recession. (AP Photo/Remy de la Mauviniere) (/ AP)

GABRIELE STEINHAUSER, AP Business Writer

Leaders of the world's 20 most powerful economies, frustrated by uncertainty in Europe, failed to come up with new ways to help the continent solve its debt troubles, leaving a two-day summit Friday with fizzled hopes of a speedy return to normalcy.

Vague offers to increase the firepower of the International Monetary Fund - at some unspecified later date - were all the eurozone leaders had to take home at the end of a roller-coaster week.

The stakes had been especially high for the summit of the Group of 20 in the French resort of Cannes, with investors hoping that non-European countries would lend the struggling eurozone a helping hand. The debt crisis that rocked the currency union for the past two years has reached a new high and now threatens to push the world economy into a second recession.

But despite extra meetings and late-night talks, the leaders struggled to reach concrete resolutions as their meeting was overshadowed by political turmoil in Greece and worries about Italy, which accepted IMF supervision of its reform efforts - a highly unusual intervention into the affairs of one of the world's leading economies.

Europe's own rescue efforts, cobbled together at several crisis meetings last week, left open many important questions, making cash-rich countries like China, Russia or Brazil reluctant to commit more than just words.

"It's important that the IMF sees its resources reinforced," Jose Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, told reporters. However, any decisions on how to reinforce the IMF were left until February.

The lack of detail disappointed markets, with stocks, bonds and the euro falling. Italy's borrowing rates, in particular, hit worrying new highs.

With their own finances already stretched from bailing out Greece, Ireland and Portugal - and traditional allies like the United States wrestling with their own problems - eurozone countries were looking to the IMF to use its financial reserves and rescue experience to help prevent the debt crisis from spreading to large economies like Italy and Spain.

The most likely way the eurozone could still get additional financing is through a special account under the auspices of the IMF, into which individual countries could make payments.

Those investments in turn could then be used to boost the currency union's own bailout fund, the euro440 billion ($606 billion) European Financial Stability Facility. That way countries like the United States, which think Europe should pay for its own financial problems, wouldn't have to put any money in. And countries like Russia and Brazil, which have expressed interest in investing in the eurozone, could.

But German Chancellor Angela Merkel and IMF chief Christine Lagarde both said that at the two-day meeting not a single country made a firm commitment that it would participate.

The broader increase of the IMF's resources, which also remained vague, is designed to help countries around the world, not just the eurozone.

Barroso said several countries had indicated they would provide bilateral loans to the IMF - which would give it more fund without collecting money from reluctant members like the U.S.

The G-20 final statement also said the IMF should work out a way to issue more special drawing rights, or SDRs, the fund's own reserve currency that can be exchanged for cash with central banks around the world. SDRs can just be created and do not require new commitments from IMF member states.

Finance ministers will now have to work out the details of these measures. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the G-20 would next deal with the topic in February.

The lack of progress on the debt crisis troubled some of the countries that would be hard hit by another recession in the eurozone.

"Every day that the eurozone crisis continues, every day it isn't resolved, is a day that has a chilling effect on the rest of the world economy," said British Prime Minister David Cameron.

"The rest of the world outside the eurozone is saying, We are ready to do our part to help stabilize the world economy. ... But you can't ask the IMF or other countries to substitute for the action that needs to be taken within the eurozone itself."

The G-20 announcements show how dramatically the powers have shifted within the IMF.

Until two years ago, the IMF - dominated by the traditional powers in Europe and the U.S. - mostly applied the painful adjustment programs that are attached to its financial lifelines to poor and emerging economies in Asia, Latin America and Africa.

Now, it's growing powers like China, Brazil and South Africa that have to decide whether helping Europe is a worthy investment.

In an effort to do just that, Italy, the eurozone's third largest economy with a debt load of 120 percent of gross domestic product, asked the IMF for help monitoring promised budgetary and structural reforms on a quarterly basis.

The country's borrowing rates have risen sharply this week - and jumped further on Friday - on fears that Minister Silvio Berlusconi does not have the political strength to implement the reforms.

Lagarde said the IMF hopes to start checking whether measures promised to the eurozone are actually implemented by the end of November, to target "a lack of credibility."